Fulfilling the ACA’s promise

We would like to remain hopeful that Margaret McCarthy got her point across to N.H. Insurance Commissioner Roger Sevigny at last week’s hearing.

It is that Anthem’s narrow network of health care providers under ObamaCare should never have been approved.

That said, McCarthy is the David up against a Goliath.

In addition, she is fighting blind.

McCarthy stands to lose her hospital and her doctors come August when the Rochester resident’s current insurance policy expires and she is forced into coverage under the Affordable Care Act.

In establishing its network of providers to service clients under the ACA, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield excluded — among others — Rochester’s Frisbie Memorial Hospital and its doctors.

This means McCarthy must go elsewhere come August or foot the bills herself.

Anthem continues to argue it had the right to grant monopoly rights to other hospitals to service regions of the state in exchange for cuttings costs. And up until now the Insurance Commission has seen no problem with that deal.

Last week, McCarthy tried to point out the problems with that deal and why it should be overturned.

Unfortunately, representatives for the state Insurance Department continue to argue those affected by the exclusion of their hospitals are within reasonable distance of those in Anthem’s network.

Such a statistical approach to a very human problem is an insult to McCarthy and those the Affordable Care Act is designed to help.

For the most part, these are not patients of great means. Traveling from New Durham, for example, to Dover’s Wentworth-Douglass Hospital is not only time consuming, it is expensive given the price of gas today. And, that’s if you even have a car available.

Frisbie is not the only hospital left out of Anthem’s network. There are nine others out of a possible 26, with only Concord being given the ability to decline. (Frisbie wasn’t even asked to bid.)

What needs to happen before a decision is reached on McCarthy’s plea is for the Insurance Department to release the hidden details of Anthem’s plan, either voluntarily or through the state’s Right to Know law.

Commissioner Sevigny should allow Anthem’s assumptions — about who can get to which network hospitals and how easily — to be tested.

Let’s put some more faces on the problem in addition to that of McCarthy.

We should not need to remind the commissioner of President Obama’s promise — that if you like your doctors and your hospital you can keep them.

But, more importantly, to provide health coverage to the nation’s most at-risk population.

In New Hampshire this means serving those who live in remote regions of the state with limited transportation options and limited financial resources.

In short, we ask: Who does the Insurance Commission and the Affordable Care Act serve? Is it Anthem or those Granite Staters most in need of access to quality health care?

We think the answers are obvious. And we hope they will be to Commissioner Sevigny once he reconsiders.